you feel unloved because you're blurry to yourself.
is legibility a prerequisite for love?
i] nush & substack
i’m sitting at my study table right now with what feels like a hundred thousand tabs open.
assignments. internship work. articles i told myself i’d read properly. half-written docs staring back at me like quiet accusations.
and still, i opened substack.
i didn’t even know i loved writing before this.
before this, everything came out sideways. long conversations. voice notes. emotional tangents disguised as casual discussions. i’ve always had thoughts sitting inside me that felt too big to keep contained, but not everyone has the time or the patience to sit with someone else’s inner world for that long. even people who love you are busy building their own lives. and honestly, most people aren’t even fully in conversation with themselves. how are they supposed to understand yours?
so i started writing here out of frustration because i didn’t feel heard by the people around me.
and somewhere between these posts, something shifted. the more clearly i started writing, the more clearly people around me started meeting me. not because they necessarily read what i wrote, but because i reinforced what i wanted for myself. forced me to think & clarify my guiding principles to myself.
ii] recognising my needs
i have dreamy 2000s bollywood music playing in the background right now as i write this at 1am. the kind that makes love feel cinematic. inevitable. loud. unmistakable.
because that’s the thing about me.
i need love to be loud. i need it all over the place. i need to feel chosen in visible ways. i need warmth that spills into the room. i love being loved out loud.
and it took me longer than i’d like to admit to realise that wanting that isn’t dramatic. it isn’t excessive. it isn’t asking for too much. it’s just knowing what kind of love i recognize.
for a very long time i couldn’t help but feel in almost all of my relationships around me that i kept giving too much. i thought i kept choosing people who couldn’t choose me back, couldn’t match my intensity, or meet me at the depth i’d like them to.
but patterns don’t repeat themselves for no reason. when you don’t know your emotional shape, you accept relationships that match your confusion.
people can only meet you as clearly as you’ve met yourself. if you don’t know what you need, someone else will decide what’s enough and what’s not for you. if you don’t know what you want, you will accept what is offered. if you don’t know what hurts you, you will call discomfort compatibility. you’ll say it’s a part of “compromise” and “sacrifice”. if you don’t know what peace feels like, chaos will feel exciting.
this is why knowing yourself isn’t optional. it’s infrastructure. you need to know what kind of love works for you.
do you need daily conversation or quiet companionship? do you need reassurance or independence? do you need both? what’s the ratio? do you need stability or intensity? what’s “balance” to you? do you want emotional softness or intellectual partnership? do you want someone expressive or someone steady & extremely regulated? do you want romance that is private or one that fills the room up?
i think the most romantic thing someone can do is ask you questions. questions are more romantic than compliments. compliments are about what they can already see. questions mean they want to understand what you’ve figured out about yourself so they can meet you there.
you need to know the genres of relationships that feel like home to you. and no friend or parent can recommend that to you. it’s all yours to decide. the ones your nervous system relaxes inside.
and then there are your non-negotiables. not preferences. non-negotiables.
consistency. effort. emotional availability. respect. loyalty. curiosity about your inner world. presence when it matters. the ability to repair after conflict instead of avoiding it. alignment in values. alignment in pace. alignment in how love is expressed.
without these, you don’t choose relationships. you drift into them.
iii] nush found writing, what’s your thing?
something else changed when i started writing here. i stopped outsourcing my self-expression to whoever happened to be around. i stopped needing people to witness every thought i had in real time. i stopped overexplaining myself just to feel understood. i started understanding myself first. find what helps you find yourself. try different hobbies till something hits. something will, i promise.
and that point when it does? well it’s changing the kind of attention i accept from others.
precision makes you visible. when you know what excites you, drains you, comforts you, irritates you, what you tolerate too easily, what you secretly resent, what you actually want from someone, your signal becomes stronger.
and strong signals don’t attract confusion. they attract recognition and acknowledgement.
clarity filters people. some relationships deepen. some disappear. both are correct outcomes.
iv] no one is coming to love you into clarity but the right people arrive once you do
concluding thoughts; there’s a strange optimism in realizing no one is coming to love you into self-understanding. you have to do that part yourself.
you have to learn your tendencies, emotional habits, your attachment patterns, comfort languages, escape routes, boundaries, desires, contradictions, pace and definition of peace.
because the clearer you become to yourself, the harder it becomes for the wrong people to stay. and the easier it becomes for the right people to find you.
a very happy finding yourself pt. 2
yours lovingly,
nush <3